God's Double Agent (19 page)

“Yes, I heard about Him when I was in college,” I began. By the end of the story, they’d all heard the gospel message. Immediately, I was dubbed “the missionary,” an affectionately derogatory nickname that, truth be told, was pretty accurate. Even though I was a very new Christian, I loved to tell everyone I met about the gospel. My new college campus in Beijing was full of people who hadn’t met Christ. Yet. That night, I took a smaller Chinese language Bible and wrote a note to Timothy on the first blank page. “Dear Timothy, I hope this book blesses you. It is the Word of the Lord.”

When I handed it to him, he flipped through a few of the pages and then put it in his desk drawer. This quiet roommate, who was intelligent and much taller than I was, instantly became my close friend because he loved to talk about current affairs and international relations. I was always thankful to meet someone who wanted to share their views on issues like elections in foreign countries. Even though he was raised in the countryside,
where people generally don’t bother too much with international politics, he was a well-informed conversationalist.

Though I appreciated my roommates, I couldn’t wait to find other believers on campus. I didn’t know who they were or where they were, but I was going to find them. When Sunday came around, I knew many believers across the city would be meeting in either government-sanctioned churches or house churches. I imagined them in their groups, raising their hands to the Lord, singing songs, and listening to the Word.

When my alarm went off, I quietly climbed out of bed, careful not to cause the bunk bed to creak, and dressed. I slipped on my shoes and cautiously turned the doorknob until I heard it click open. After I went out into the hallway, I managed to shut the door without waking anyone, and was thrilled at the fact that I was finally about to find other believers!

I wasn’t sure where to go, so I meandered along the sidewalks through a leafy area of campus, past racks full of bicycles waiting for the day. A few early risers jogged around a large sports center and track in the middle of the campus. I walked by an empty basketball court, some flowering trees, and a statue of Confucius. The entire time I walked, I strained to hear singing emanating from any of the buildings. At first, I wanted to find a student group, but I would’ve settled for finding even a government-sanctioned church after walking for an hour. Though I didn’t quite understand how a Christian church could operate under the thumb of the Chinese government, I was hungry enough for the fellowship of believers that I would’ve tried it. When I got to the wall surrounding the campus, I walked through a gate leading out into the city of Beijing.

Should I turn left or right?
I thought, pausing at the intersection. I turned right, walked along the sidewalk, and read all of the signs on the buildings. My mind went back to my first visit to Beijing, when we protested in Tiananmen Square. I shuddered when I thought of the tragedy, of the innocent lives lost, but
then shoved it from my mind. I walked for miles, taking in the scenery. Bicyclists wove in and out of traffic with baskets full of groceries. Apartment buildings with laundry hanging out of the windows towered over the city. Supermarkets teemed with people. Though I got to see much of the city, my feet hurt and my heart was heavy by the end of the day. I never saw one church.

“Oh, the missionary is back,” my new roommate said as I opened the door and dropped my red backpack on the floor. The other roommates dramatically shushed each other, stopped talking, and then broke out into laughter. “No more talk about women!”

“I don’t mind if you talk about girls.” I smiled. “As long as you don’t mind when I talk about Jesus.”

“No, no, no,” Timothy said from the top of a bunk, tossing a small pillow at me. “We know our joking offends your ‘Christian sensibilities.’” He spoke of my faith like it was a milk allergy. “So we’ll keep the coarse joking to a minimum and you keep the Christ stuff to yourself.”

I picked up the pillow from the floor and threw it back up at him. “Yeah, that’s improbable on both counts.”

“A letter came for you,” another roommate said, handing me a letter with Heidi’s beautiful handwriting on it. I tore it open and began reading it.

“Let me see,” Timothy said, trying to grab it.

I yanked the letter away at the last second, pulling it closer to my eyes.

“It must be from someone . . . important,” another said, laughing at how I was protecting the letter.

“Dear Xiqiu,” I read silently, while my new friends were trying to snatch it. “I really don’t think this is working out. The distance is too great for our relationship to overcome.”

“What’s wrong,” Timothy asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Devastated, I grabbed my backpack and headed to the library.
If I was going to employ all of my rhetoric skills to convince Heidi she was my destiny, I was going to need some peace and quiet. “Distance shouldn’t affect one’s fate,” I pleaded once I got settled at a library desk. I poured out my heart to her. The next morning, I went to the post office and prayed she would receive my message with an open heart.

Because this was before the instant communication of email and texts, I would have to wait days or maybe even weeks for her reply. After I dropped my letter into the mail, however, I tried to focus on my academic life. Also, I needed a spiritual family more than ever.

One day, I came back to my dorm and noticed that I wasn’t the only person with relationship drama. Timothy was lying on the bed with his head buried under a pillow.

“Want to go for a walk?” I said, nudging him. “What’s wrong? I know you too well for you to pretend that you’re okay.”

He opened up to me on our walk, explaining that his girlfriend broke up with him even though they had dated since college. He planned on marrying her, but she’d written him and broke the agonizing news that she had another man in her life. When I heard his heartbreak, I started talking to him about the gospel, using a little red book of the four spiritual laws that was in my pocket. Then I shared the good news about God’s love.

He immediately broke down into tears, so we sat down on a stone wall in front of the main administration building. He had heard about the gospel before graduate school, but only in his heartbreak did it resonate in his soul.

“Are you ready to make a decision?” I asked.

“You know, I’d read about ‘Christian people’ before.” When he said “Christian people,” he used the English words instead of the Chinese words, which indicated that the only way to really find out about Christianity back then was through the
missionary materials. “But the first time I really came into contact with any Christians was when I saw you and your college friends. I do find it’s very true that you are a peculiar group.”

I was crestfallen, believing this was an insult, a way to distance himself from the gospel because of my inadequacies.

“But,” he added, “I want to join.”

I was thrilled to have a believing friend in my graduate school, and even in my own dorm. However, I still ached for the fellowship of an actual church. “Where do you go to church?” I asked my American teacher after class one day. I assumed most American teachers were Christians and could give me some tips on how to connect with other believers.

“Well, there’s a government-sanctioned church just two miles off campus,” he said, rolling out a map on his desk. He pointed to a spot that indicated our university. “Look, we’re here, and the church is . . . here.” He drew a circle around the intersection. There it was, so close to where I had looked before. When I left the campus, I’d simply walked in the wrong direction.

The next Sunday, however, I knew exactly where to go. I walked to the edge of the campus and took a left. When I got to the next intersection, I took Xisinan Street and eventually saw a building that had a cross.

The Hadian Church was part of the “Three Self Patriotic Movement.” Because the Communists feared pro-American sentiment growing alongside Christianity, they wanted their churches to have “self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation.” This was abbreviated to Three Self Patriotic Movement, but it basically meant the government was keeping track of exactly what happened in the church. Mostly, I assumed, they wanted to prevent any subversive political messages from being taught from the pulpit, and to ensure churches would be loyal to the Communist Party.

When I walked in, I felt like I was home. There were people sitting in the congregation, many of them students, with Bibles
opened in their laps, praying. I wanted to walk up to all of them and introduce myself, but I sat in a pew to focus on worship. I almost cried when the music began, and I listened intently to the sermon.

The preacher, Pastor Li, was around seventy years old, and the congregation listened to his every word. It was rare to see older Christians in China, and in the countryside churches believers are considered “elders” when they’re in their twenties. But in the government-sanctioned churches, the Communists always selected the most elderly ministers to make sure the churches didn’t attract young people. That method apparently didn’t work here, because the church had a healthy number of students in the congregation. The following Sunday I traipsed to the service again, and sat near the middle so I could both hear the sermon as well as check out all the people.

That’s when I overheard some students around me talking about a Bible study on Thursday night. My ears perked up at the thought of fellowship with other Christian students. All week, I prayed that I would meet some good friends so I wouldn’t feel so lonely at grad school. When Thursday finally came, I walked to church, hoping that there’d be a good turnout. How surprised I was to open the door and see a few hundred students gathered together to worship God!

Most of the students were Chinese, with a few international students scattered around. People mingled, introduced themselves, and found their seats as the service was about to begin. A younger preacher named Pastor Feng approached the lectern, and I soon discovered he was an independent preacher the church had designated solely for the college students. He was full of passion, and spoke powerfully about the Scriptures.

Even though the church was government-sanctioned, I could tell that it taught the Bible and was obviously full of faithful believers. I began attending these Bible studies every week and soon was meeting other young people.

“I go to the People’s University of China,” I overheard someone say to another.

“Me too!” I interjected, perhaps too quickly. A few others in our circle also attended the same university, so we made introductions and began talking about our hometowns and our current areas of study.

“Maybe we should have our own fellowship on campus,” I suggested. “We could meet in different dorms, which would be a nice way to stay connected throughout the week.”

Everyone readily agreed, and I got the feeling that many of the other students longed for Christian friendships too. Immediately, I set up fellowship groups in different dorms. As word got out, our numbers grew. That summer we received training from Campus Crusade to learn how to use the four spiritual laws and to learn how to pray with people if they wanted to believe in Jesus. It might sound rudimentary, but we were very new to Christianity and these tips for evangelism were wonderfully helpful. In fact, in August while I was visiting Heidi’s hometown, I led her brother in the prayer to accept Christ to be his Savior and Lord. Then, in September, I shared the spiritual laws with another student who accepted Jesus.

I wrote down everything that happened in a small contact book, as a documentation of my new brothers and sisters in Christ. Though it was somewhat dangerous to record their names, I wanted to make sure I could stay in contact with other believers. And so I wrote in tiny letters and kept the book hidden in my apartment at all times. By Christmas, my book had many more names in it, and we had a very strong fellowship. We met to pray, sing songs, study the Bible, and discuss how to evangelize the campus.

“Okay, everyone,” I said, early one December evening in our dorm fellowship. “Our fellow students will be interested
in Christianity, if only briefly, in a couple of weeks. We should use Christmas as a reason to tell other people about Jesus.”